2014-06-09
Explanation
The Joke
A man named Ahab checks into a holodeck-like simulation facility. The attendant notes he only ordered three minutes in the holorooms. Ahab confirms: "Shan't be but three minutes." He enters and says "Activate simulation." A giant white whale appears. But then an attendant rushes in calling "Captain Ahab, you forgot your--" and finds Ahab lying naked and content with the whale, implying a sexual encounter rather than the expected hunt.
The Humor
The comic sets up an expectation based on Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. Captain Ahab is literature's most famous monomaniac, obsessed with hunting and killing the white whale. The setup -- the holorooms, the short time slot, the simulation of a white whale -- leads the reader to assume Ahab wants to finally kill his nemesis. The punchline subverts this entirely: Ahab's obsession with the whale was not violent hatred but romantic or sexual desire. The "three minutes" detail retroactively becomes a joke about how quickly the encounter would last. It reframes one of literature's greatest tales of obsessive revenge as repressed desire.
References
Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville follows Captain Ahab's monomaniacal quest to kill the white whale that took his leg. The holorooms are a reference to the holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation, a virtual reality room that can simulate any environment.